The campaign, built around Gustuff malware, was discovered by Cisco Talos researchers and disclosed in a blog post authored by Vitor Ventura. The malware was offered as a botnet-for-rent on Exploit.in and has been shown to have the potential to hit banks and financial institutions around the world.
Talos researchers found the code to be obfuscated and packed, a combination that makes it very difficult to analyze with standard debuggers. They discovered that the code has multiple layers of protection against being run in a sandbox or on a device with antimalware in place. Once the code decides it’s safe to execute, though, it becomes very active, very quickly.
The malware finds and exfiltrates a user’s contact list and banking credentials, using one for spreading itself and the other for setting up criminal financial activity. So far, the malware is using SMS to spread rather slowly — slowly enough, in fact, for it to remain under the radar of many protective systems. Thus, while it’s not spreading quickly at this point, it has a target list that would allow extensive replication and spread.
Read More.. Source Dark Reading